Many years ago when I was in my doctorial program at Idaho State University, my advisor was Dr. Ken Bosworth. He once pointed out to me that if you traced back from advisor to advisor, you would eventually reach the great mathematician Karl Weierstrass. Thanks to The Mathematics Genealogy Project website, I can now demonstrate his claim.

I call the following chart, "How to get from a mathematical genius to a mathematical half-wit in eight easy steps."

Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass Honorary Universität Königsberg 1854
Leo Königsberger Dr. phil. Universität Berlin 1860
Georg Alexander Pick Ph.D. Universität Wien 1880
Charles Loewner Ph.D. University of Prague 1917
Lipman Bers D.Nat.Sci. Charles University 1938
Joaquin Basilio Diaz Ph.D. Brown University 1945
Harry Wright McLaughlin Ph.D. University of Maryland College Park 1966
Ken W. Bosworth Ph.D. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1984
Michael Molinsky D.A. Idaho State University 1996

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